VMLMAT Handles Requests
Document Actions
BMC R&D has a tool that fills the niche. Developers and QA users both use its
features to support their needs.
VMLMAT was designed like a virtual robot system administrator. You could ask that a system be brought up by creating a help desk ticket and support could answer that request by performing that function. Likewise, if you need to have your system restored from a backup, you might need support to facilitate your request. Traditionally in many shops, this is still done just that way. Yet, VMLMAT puts that ability and more into the hands of R&D users.
The more I refer to is the fact that besides handling requests, VMLMAT can automate the backup process by creating scheduled backups and keeping the latest generations of backups needed. Those backups that fall outside of the range of needed versions are automatically deleted. When a user needs a restore of his system to fix a problem that developed, he can just use one of his auto backups or perhaps one that he took manually by request within VMLMAT to specifically be a checkpoint of his process.
It doesn't do everything, VMLMAT was designed specifically to allow System Administrators to control the VM resources by allowing a separate group to manage the number of volumes of disk and the number of VMs allocated to a Mainframe using their own processes and tools. So, if a user needed more space he has several options. One, he could backup his system and request that a larger volume be allocated to his VM. When the system administrator has replaced that volume with a larger one, the user just restores his system back to the new volume. Another option a user might need is to have multiple volumes. VMLMAT supports that as well.
Like all robots of limited Artificial Intelligence (and VMLMAT has very little encoded), VMLMAT was designed for the limited controlled environment that our R&D used. Yet to its credit, it took many manual processes and handled it on its own. VMLMAT handles the requests for our R&D. When it failed to do so, we found out why and fixed that problem. VMLMAT handles hundreds of requests without incident.
One of its nice features is its email notifications and auditing. Requests are saved in logs that can be reviewed and security authorization changes also logged. Just last week, when a R&D user in another country tried to restore an image to their older virtual machine and the process failed due to too small of a volume, the system administrator (me) was notified by email. I reallocated a larger volume for the user and re-drove the restore request for him using VMLMAT and sent an email back to this R&D person that his machine was ready for use. The R&D developer was quite pleased about VMLMAT and even more pleased that support also improved even before he could raise an incident ticket.
In today's economy, there is an urge to get more with less. Unfortunately with people, more work doesn't translate to higher quality of service. Robots, even virtual ones like VMLMAT, free up the mundane work for specialist to handle the harder Intelligence problems. The task we humans are still better at for now.
For other reads regarding VMLMAT, open source, and Linux ideas see: Steve Carl's Blog.
_____
tags:
